Basil Spence – Buildings and Projects

28 March 2012

Basil Spence was the best known British architect of the 1950s and 1960s, but controversial projects in the 1970s left a mixed legacy. To Britain’s most advanced young designers, Spence’s lack of interest in debate and theory, and his concern with ‘beauty’, seemed old-fashioned.

A new book published this month, Basil Spence – Buildings and Projects, seeks to reintegrate Spence into the history of his own period. Using the extensive resource of the Sir Basil Spence archive, editors Jane Thomas, Louise Campbell and Miles Glendinning place his key buildings in their historical and critical contexts, chart his public and personal life, and reveal the full range of his work. The archive, which has provided the material for the book, contains over 40,000 items and was presented to RCAHMS by the Spence family in 2003.

Basil Spence identified strongly with his Scottish roots throughout his career. Born to Scottish parents in India, he was sent to school in Scotland, studied architecture at the Edinburgh College of Art, and also began his architectural practice in the city, where he was based for half his career. His most important Scottish buildings are Mortonhall Crematorium in Edinburgh (1967), the Hutchesontown C tower blocks in the Gorbals (1965, demolished 1993), and Gribloch country house in Stirlingshire (1939).

Although he moved to England after winning the competition to design a new cathedral for Coventry after it was bombed during the Second World War, he maintained strong links with his Edinburgh office and continued to design buildings for Scotland throughout his life.

Jane Thomas, Curator of Architectural Collections at RCAHMS said, “Spence was a gifted artist and exceptionally good at selling his ideas to clients through his drawings. He was also a brilliant communicator who was able to express his vision to individual clients and to the wider public. We are exceptionally lucky to have his archive in Scotland, and, after a concerted programme of conservation, curation and digitisation, it has allowed us to make his drawings and papers available to the public for the first time since his death in 1976.”

Basil Spence: Buildings and Projects is published by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

You can also browse some of the best images from the Sir Basil Spence archive in our gallery.